Purple Harry Cleaning Products

The cleaning of your bicycle. Some people like it, some people hate it, others … just don’t do it. I for one like doing it, I enjoy it, but it’s just that sometimes, I simply don’t have enough time, certainly not enough to give it the clean it deserves. Often it’s a quick scrub down, dry off, and oil of the chain etc.

I went a few rides without giving my winter bike a clean as I knew that Kevin had sent me a load of Purple Harry cleaning products to try, I thought I had to get the bike filthy, to be able to do a good enough test on the products.

So time for a clean, I did my normal routine of a warm bucket of soapy water only this time I used the “Super Sponge”, it comes as a solid puck like disc, and you soak it in water and it becomes a sponge, as you’d expect. It performs as you’d expect, pretty well, very sponge like … It does have like a kind of coating, or at least it feels/looks like it does, it certainly didn’t seem to get as messy as a normal car washing type sponge that I would normally use, you know, the ones you buy from a car parts shop for like a quid. It’s like it doesn’t suck up the mess, it cleans it off, but when you rinse in the water, it comes a lot clean again. Well, cleaner anyway. There are still oil smears on it, but nowhere near as bad as a typical sponge. Perhaps after a few uses it’ll get worse, we’ll see. I shall have to do a follow up blog.

So after the initial scrub down, it was time to tackle the drivetrain, this is where the “Bike Floss” comes in handy, perfect for getting into the little nooks and cleaning out the old bits of muck that you just can’t get to with a sponge, or brush. They’re also perfect for cleaning up the brake callipers, they slide in perfectly and are great for hooking out the dirt that accumulates in there, they’re wire as well, so bendable and if you chuck them in water beforehand they soak up a bit and are great for cleaning out the gunk. Then you can do as I did, and use a dry one to almost polish it up. Perfect! They come in three sizes, I found I only used the medium sized ones, but there are smaller ones, and thicker ones, which would be perfect depending on your bike. An excellent product which until I saw them, I hadn’t though I’d ever need something like this but I’ll definitely be including them in my future deep cleaning ritual, not so much the quick cleans, but I shall be keeping a stock of them for my weekend bike cleans.

The last product to test was the “Mitt”. I absolutely loved this thing. I had actually been thinking of something like it before, one of those things that while you’re drying off and rubbing down the bike you think “I could do with a glove for this, I’ll have to look one up when I’m done …” then you go back inside, clean yourself off and forget about the glove idea … Well Purple Harry didn’t, thankfully. It’s a simple idea, and I can’t really say much about it, as it’s a glove. But it really is great, once all is done on the bike, stick the glove on and dry the bike down, all the while giving it a polish. You can do the bike in half the time (Not scientifically timed) as with a normal cloth, it’s just easier. Like cleaning the cables off, nice and simple.

All in all, pretty impressed with these products, out of the three, I would definitely say the Mitt was the star of the show for me, so simple, but so effective and useful, to top it off, you can just chuck it in the wash when it gets a bit grubby and you’re back in the game. Good work Harry.